Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1887-01-20
LUCKY DOMESTIC .DRUDGES.
Household Service Better Paid than Fancy
Work for Girls and Women
St. Louis Republican.


Work for Girls and Women.
st. Louis Republican.
The fact that, in the midst of q wide
spread labor agitation in which working
peorle are struggling against a constant
tendency to reduction of wages, one very
important lat or class manages to remain
absolute master of the situation in it's part
of the field is beginning to attract atten-
ton.
The favored class is the house servants.
1t is all the same to them whether the
| latest movement of the Massachusetts
shoemakers, or of the western Pennsyl-
vania coke burners, or of the Chicago
meat packers, succeeds or fails. They
have the households of the lands at their
mercy. They are not skilled workers: as
rule they possess less proficiency in
their vocation than any other class of
| persons who earn their living by manual
labor. They possess no organization !;
| they do not act in body; they have NO
| grand master or head center; they hold
no conventions and proclaim no plat
| forms. Yet they have things their own
way in matters of wages, hours, holidays,
and sub division of household service.
An investigation in New York shows that
the wages paid to factory girls are S., 81,
So, and down to $3.50 a week, and pay
their board out of this. There are more
sewing women and girls to work in fac
tories than the trades REQ dire; for one
place half dozen girls will make appli-
cation, and this sharp and severe compe-
tition for places forces them to work for
bare living.
Their wages are low because the supply
of this kind of labor is ir excess of the
demand.
But are they compelled to work in sew
ing rooms packing lofts, and factories at
this low pay? Is their no other field
open to them where they can do better?
Yes; there is a field of labor where they
can earn So, and 81 a week and get thier
living besides-domestic service-but,
strange to say, they have an unconquer-
able aversion to it. They would rather
live In a state of genteel semi-starva-
ton than earn a good living and some
thing over as servants in private house
hold. Our American young men have
not more completely abandoned the
mechanical pursuits than our American
young women have foresworn domestic
service. Both are given up to foreigners
and foreign girls only take to it while
looking at anything else. In fact, the
most important work in the land, the
care of its households, actually goes a.
begging, at time when the com plant
is necessarily heard that all other fields
of labor are over stocked and there is
nothing for the constantly increasing
army of idlers to do.
1t is a very interesting contradiction
and inconsistency in the labor question
this impossibility of finding persons
enough to do the work of our house
holds, in the midst of the very opposite
imPossibility of finding work enough for
the workers in all other departments of
life. No remedy for it has been discov-
ered,and it continues to grow worse every
year. The mayor elect of New York, in
recent interview, admits the wretched
condition of working women in that
great city, but intimates very plainly
that they themselves are to blame for it,
since there is always open to them vo-
cation in which they can earn a good
living, but which they refuse to enter
through false pride. 1t is pleaded in be-
half of fallen women that they fall
through failure, after repeated efforts to
make an honest livelihood in the ordi-
nary female vocations; but the New York
mayor elect plainly declares that he has
neither sympathy nor patience with
those who enter upon life of shame
when the way is constantly open to them
to pursue an honest livelihood" in pri-
waite families.
The subject is one that needs investi-
cation. Why is it that girls and single
women are so averse TO household sci